HubPages CEO: Google has a big, fat double standard

Paul Edmundson, the chief executive officer of HubPages, says a recent internal initiative to toughen Google’s search algorithm (nicknamed Panda) has punished legitimate sites with user-generated content (like the one he runs) as well as dubious content farms, while sparing Google’s own properties:

Google’s recent “Panda” update intentionally upends this ecosystem; it doesn’t just lower the rankings of individual pages that the algorithm deems “low quality” (however that may be defined by Google) but, as Google has said publicly, “low-quality [page] content [on the domain] can impact an entire domain.” This means that high-quality content hosted on open publishing platforms like HubPages and YouTube can be negatively impacted in their search rankings simply by hosting contributions of various quality on a single site.

HubPages has seen a negative impact from this change, but so far YouTube has not (Search Metrics Winners). One presumes Google isn’t treating its own affiliated sites differently than any other site, but YouTube’s open publishing environment makes low-quality content as prevalent as on any other moderated open publishing platform. Google shows over 13 million indexed videos on YouTube for lose weight (known spammy area) and over 10 million for forex (another spammy area). Apparently, Google’s Panda update has been punitive only to platforms other than Google’s.

Surprise, surprise… Google treats its own properties differently than it treats others. This has actually been going on for years, but Google is rarely taken to task for it. Most of the complaints that have been made about the practice have come from Google’s competition. As Google has entered an increasing number of markets over the years, it now has a great many competitors in many different areas.

Google’s practices wouldn’t be so detrimental if it wasn’t so close to being a monopoly. Sadly, it has become synonymous with the idea of search, even though it is hardly the best or most intuitive search engine out there, let alone privacy-aware.

Is Google spying on Twitter?

Lately, Google has been witnessing a mini-exodus of some of its best and brightest to younger technology companies in Silicon Valley, particularly Twitter and Facebook, which are smaller and less bureaucratic. Google’s attempts to stop younger companies from poaching its personnel appear to gotten more desperate, according to this report:

In at least one of the cases Google is said to have made a counteroffer before the employee even told Google they were considering an offer from Twitter.

We previously reported that Google had set up a special group to respond to these situations quickly, sometimes overnight. But we’ve never heard of Google making counter offers prior to the actual offer from Facebook or Twitter being made.

Multiple sources close to Twitter have said that someone with access to Twitter’s most confidential information, such as who they are interviewing for key executive spots, may be leaking that information directly to Google. In this case, Google may have acted on that information too quickly. And people at Twitter, say these sources, are steaming mad.

Twitter has long made the mistake of relying on Google for essential things like content delivery and document storage. (Famously, a few years ago, Twitter’s Google Apps account was compromised and information in it published by TechCrunch, the same blog that ran the report excerpted above).

Twitter should become self-sufficient and sever all ties with Google. There’s no reason for it to be in bed with the Monster of Mountain View.

Want proof that Android isn’t truly open? Here you go!

Once again, Google is trying to have it both ways:

During a keynote presentation at Google’s IO developer conference last year, Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra proclaimed that the search giant created Android in order to bring freedom to the masses and avoid a “draconian future” in which one company controlled the mobile industry. Looking past the self-congratulatory rhetoric, Android’s poor track record on openness is becoming harder to ignore.

The company revealed Thursday that it will delay publication of the Android 3.0 source code for the foreseeable future—possibly for months. It’s not clear when (or if) the source code will be made available. The decision puts Android on a path towards a “draconian future” of its own, in which it is controlled by a single vendor—Google.

The article goes on to deliver a scathing indictment of Google’s track record.

It really is worth reading all of the way through.

Android, as it presently exists, is *already* controlled by a single vendor, Google. The only reason that Android isn’t completely proprietary is that Google built it on top of a free software kernel and free software libraries. Otherwise, it would be, like Apple’s iOS.

As the Ars Technica article above makes clear, Google doesn’t care about providing timely access to source code… a central tenet of the free software movement. Google is only interested in free software to the extent that it can use it to grow its own empire.

That’s why Google hates the AGPL (Affero General Public License). The AGPL requires that an entity running free software over a network make the source code of that software available; it is identical to the regular GNU General Public License except for this clause.

The AGPL was written to prevent companies like Google from taking free software, making improvements to it, and using the improved software to deliver services using the SAAS business model, but refusing to give back to the community by releasing the source code of the improvements.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of free software is licensed under the AGPL – although usage has increased since 2007, when the Free Software License released Version 3 of the AGPL. For instance, StatusNet and Diaspora (free software projects that replicate Twitter and Facebook’s functionality in a federated fashion) are both licensed under the AGPL.

Google’s book scheme put on ice

Finally, somebody is telling Google NO:

The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.

The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus concerns about the company’s growing power over information. While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the effort is one of the pet projects of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief executive next month. And the project has wide support inside the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the world’s information.

Fortunately, wide opposition outside of the company helped persuade Judge Denny Chin that the proposed settlement was not in the public interest. A broad coalition, including librarians, college professors, The Justice Department, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog all opposed the settlement.

Consumer Watchdog issued a statement hailing the decision:

“Google’s entire business model is to never ask permission, but to seek forgiveness if necessary,” said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “Judge Chin has ruled simply that you can’t take other people’s property and use it without asking.  This should send the message to the engineers at the Googleplex that the next time they want to use someone’s intellectual property, they need to ask permission.”

Simpson noted that Judge Chin also found the deal raised antitrust problems.  Consumer Watchdog was among the first to oppose the agreement on those grounds and urged the U.S. Justice Department to intervene. Justice argued against the deal.

The Monster of Mountain View likes to claim that it is just trying to expand access to knowledge. In reality, it’s trying to gain control over created works and use them to make money. Thank goodness this most recent attempt by Google to extend its monopoly position has been thwarted.

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Monster of Mountain View? How about just Mountain View Monster? Google seeks town takeover

The San Jose Mercury News reports that Mountain View is running out of space for companies that aren't named Google:

Google's aggressive online growth increasingly has a counterpart in bricks and mortar, with the company's Mountain View headquarters mushrooming in the past four years to occupy more than 4 million square feet, or the equivalent of about 40 Home Depot stores.

But that's just a start. On Silicon Valley's NASA base, Google is preparing to build a new corporate campus with fitness and day care facilities and — in a first in the valley — employee housing, adding 1.2 million square feet of space to Google's real estate holdings.

Although other valley giants also occupy vast amounts of real estate, Google is growing in a way that is distinct, remaking its surroundings according to its own values. In addition to buying and leasing buildings and squeezing out some of its neighbors, it is prodding the city of Mountain View to transform the area around its headquarters, adding housing and retail to create an environment more like a town center.

The Monster of Mountain View's appetite for land and office space is resulting in a loss of economic diversity in town, as other tech firms migrate elsewhere:

Phil Mahoney, executive vice president with Cornish & Carey, recently relocated the semiconductor company MIPS Technologies to Sunnyvale, “as much as anything, getting out of Google's way.”

“The handwriting is on the wall. You don't want to compete with them for space,” Mahoney said. “In real estate circles, it's called 'the Google effect.' “

Google is so hungry for space it's willing to pay to get rid of tenants so it can use every bit of space in buildings it has purchased.

Other businesses feel pressured by Google's expansion, like Colin McDowell's McDSP, a tiny atoll bobbing in the Googley ocean.

McDSP's 1,682-square-foot office is now the only non-Google space in 1300 Crittenden Lane, a 115,000-square-foot building that Google bought in 2006 as part of a $319 million deal that also included the core Googleplex. McDowell, the CEO of the six-person audio-technology company, has a lease through 2014, but Google wants him out now. McDowell hasn't wanted to move, saying the rent is good and the offices are close to Shoreline Amphitheatre, where professional musicians frequently need McDSP's services on short notice.

As he enters his office each day and peers through a glass window into a Google break room replete with a Google-logo espresso maker, racks of candy, snacks and an often boisterous foosball table, McDowell says he can't help but feel a hint of jealousy.

“Could you just not flaunt it so bad?” he says of his landlord. “Not right in our face?”

Mercy? From Google? Fuhgetaboutit.

Chrome fan says Google has removed important privacy control from Chrome

An individual who naively switched to Chrome a few months ago because the existence of one particular feature convinced her the spyware-laden brower could be recommended to persons “concerned about privacy and security issues” is now having second thoughts:

It seems that the new Chrome beta (7.0.517.24) — being automatically pushed out now — has (with no warning whatsoever) removed what I consider to be a key functionality, the cookie control setting that allows you to be queried for a decision whenever new cookies are being offered, and permits you to determine how cookies from related sites will be handled in the future.

She concludes:

Without such a setting, or an alternative means to access equivalent functionality (e.g. through a browser plugin/extension), I will likely be forced to move back to Firefox, and recommend the same course for most other individuals and firms.

It's no doubt true that many Chrome users have never accessed this feature, and choose rather simply to accept all cookies on a willy-nilly basis. But this simply is not an acceptable modus operandi for vast numbers of users and organizations who need convenient site-by-site cookie control. Nor is manually entering cookie exceptions into tables a practical solution on a routine basis.

Apparently this person, Lauren Weinstein, is unaware that Google logs keystrokes typed into the Chrome search box. She's also unaware that per-site cookie control – by itself – is almost meaningless in terms of safeguarding one's privacy. Cookie control doesn't provide the capability to block web bugs and trackers, find and erase Flash cookies, or prevent malicious JavaScript from executing, for example.

There are add-ons for Firefox that do all of those things.

Nobody concerned about privacy and/or security should be using any Google products, period. To say that Google is hostile to the very idea of user privacy is an understatement. Google is actively working to create a world in which there is no privacy. Those opposed to such a dystopia should be boycotting Google products and services regardless of how usable or useful those products and services may be. Those who do not stand on principle will have to accept the consequences of allowing their computer, mobile phone, and television to essentially become telescreens for Google.

Loss of net neutrality could further erode privacy online, to Google's advantage

The NY Times has a rather good article out about the impact that the loss of net neutrality would have on user privacy:

Without neutrality, say advocates of online privacy, the Internet becomes more like a mall — where users are from the start viewed as consumers — and less like a public square.

“The people who are pushing for a nonneutral world are pushing it for monetary purposes,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for privacy online.

“Interfering with packets,” she said, echoing Mr. Saxon’s concerns, “creates the space for this kind of surveillance.”

Google has no incentive to be in favor of “net neutrality”. It is already a monster, the Monster of Mountain View. Because of its size, it can strike deals with internet service providers like Verzion, ensuring that its “services” are delivered through the fast lane. So what if everyone else gets screwed?

Google isn't interested in being the web's gateway. Rather, Google's executives want Google to be the destination. The only place you have to go when you connect to the Internet. Er, make that the GoogleNet. Google envisions itself as handling all your communications needs (email, chat, and social networking) providing a global storefront for you to buy physical goods, digital content, plus software “apps”, and giving you a place to store your data (photos, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) Since you'll trust Google with all your information, everything, Google will know pretty much everything about you. And they'll be able to use such knowledge to monetize you.

It is already happening:

For a recent series in The Wall Street Journal about how Web sites track their visitors, called “What They Know,” The Journal studied the top 50 Web sites in the United States to see how many tools they embedded in visitors’ computers. Many use more than 100 such tools; only Wikipedia had none.

Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School who is an advocate for free software and online privacy, sees frameworks like the one proposed by Google and Verizon as emphasizing the business of the Internet at the expense of the privacy of the Internet.

“As the network does more to adapt to what commerce needs, it becomes more and more about knowing what’s inside the head of the user, about what the person is doing and buying,” he said.

Google has sold out on net neutrality, just like it sold out on user privacy a long time ago. If you are bothered by this, do what we've done: Leave Google behind. It's possible. And it's rewarding. You'll see more of the Web, you'll see it faster, and you'll see it with less clutter and junk.

Google "Street View" has got your number

Too many people naively think that they're anonymous when using the Internet. Truth is, as far as Google is concerned, nobody should be anonymous. The Monster of Mountain View is doing everything it can to make privacy an ideal of yesterday:

Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.

Germany's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he's “horrified” by the discovery.

“I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View,” according to German broadcaster ARD.

Schaar might be horrified, but given what we know about how Google operates already, we're not. We're simply not surprised at all.

We have to give Germany propos for having a Federal Commissioner for Data Protection. The United States – where Google is headquartered – really needs one of those. The Federal Trade Commission is a joke. It doesn't keep pace with Google at all. And that allows Google to get away with things like this.